I've always been amazed that very few organizations question why Google Analytics is free. Sites are literally handing Google a list of targeted visitors their competitors can advertise to.
> Google has said it uses data to better its services and that users can manage, delete and transfer their data at any time.<p>No, users cannot delete their personal data, unless they have a Google account. Google collects an enormous amount of personal data from people without a Google account, and offers no tools for controlling that data.
Somewhat related, a thing I found suspicious, though not surprising, the last time I tried it:<p>Try Googling for how to block all Google Analytics and related services in your Hosts file.<p>Does it seem harder to find a simple list of IP addresses + instructions than it should be?<p>While Google Search results quality has gone down across the board in the last 3 or so years, it seemingly tries particularly hard to pretend it doesn’t understand what you mean with queries like these.
I wonder if the GDPR had any effect, but I hope it will change things. Annoying users is better than letting the whole data hoarding keep happening.<p>At least california introduced a bill, too.<p>I'm really curious where all of this will lead to. I wonder how many people are informed that brexit and the trump election were carried by big data. I'm also curious if Obama got help from those big data techniques, I remember he used facebook, but I don't have details.
Yawn. They have been “investigating” for what, a decade now? But never take any action and Google ignores them and becomes more egregious every day, because they know this. Same with Google’s tax situation.<p>What happened to those GDPR fines of 4% of global turnover? Looked good on paper but it’s an open secret now that the regulators have no teeth.
At this point, why does the EU even bother with Google? What's stopping them from just funding their own "Google" and forcing all their subjects to use them?